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The 2016 hurricane season is already a nasty one. Storms pummeled the Caribbean islands, Central America, Mexico and the US. And in New Jersey, people are preparing for the next big one by raising their houses up an entire level.

The painstaking construction project requires a unified hydraulic jacking system to slooooowly crank an entire house up inch by inch. Over several months, the house teeters on stilts as a crew pours the new, taller foundation. “They’re perched on these wooden supports that look almost like Jenga games,” says Ira Wagner. “It seems so precarious.”

The New Jersey photographer documented 100 homes as they undergo this transformation for his fascinating series House Raising. It features everything from craftsman bungalows to modernist mansions hovering several feet above ground—one with flowers still blooming in its window boxes. When completed, the homes will presumably be safer from the dangers of the sea while enjoying a better view of it.

House raising took off in New Jersey just months after Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012 , damaging or destroying 346,000 homes. New state regulations and expanded FEMA flood maps followed, encouraging home owners in flood-prone areas to raise their homes to dodge soaring insurance premiums. Houses are typically lifted around three to 10 feet off the ground, and can cost over $150,000.

Wagner saw his first raised house in Long Beach shortly after Hurricane Sandy, and was instantly fascinated with how strange it looked. He began photographing them in 2014, driving more than 100 miles along the coast from Cape May to Raritan Bay. He worked with a Mamiya 7 and a few large format cameras, trying to shoot on bright but slightly hazy afternoons. Sometimes while he was working, curious neighbors wandered out to chat. “They’d point to a line on a telephone pole above my head and say, ‘That’s where the water got to,’” Wagner says.

He also photographed finished homes, which don’t look any less unusual. Some owners try to disguise the lower level by converting it into a garage or covering it with clapboard or shrubbery, but the awkwardness remains. The herculean effort and risk almost doesn’t seem worth it. "People want to be near the water, yet the water, for all its beauty, is a threatening environment," Wagner says. The homes in House Raising are an unsettling reminder.

House Raising is on display in The Fence 2016 in Brooklyn until September 20.